"Hup!"
With Green Shark’s battle cry, the muffalo (not) began to roll forward.
Whatever it looked like, it was faithfully performing a cart’s essential function, at least.
We had generously greased the axles too, so it did not take all that much force for its weight.
Rumble, rumble, rumble...
At any rate, the cart started moving while making a sort of cry(?) of its own.
"It actually moves."
Marmotte, who had been pushing from behind with enough force to turn her face bright red, was astonished as well.
We had dealt with all the heavy cargo and loaded only relatively light things, so the weight itself was not impossible to move. The problem was simply that she was weak.
After pushing for a while, Marmotte naturally climbed onto the cart and went from porter to cargo, but that was within expectations too.
"Isn’t it heavy?"
"I can manage it."
Green Shark silently pulled the cart, though the sweat running down from her head was an unavoidable physiological response.
When I wiped her sweat away with a scrap of cloth, a soft smile formed on her lips.
.
This area had a temperate climate, but the nights were inevitably a little chilly.
During the day, the imposing presence of the Patchwork Muffalo kept raiders and wild animals from attacking us.
And at night, the hides we had stocked up on made for a warm bed.
"It feels like we’ve settled down in a home."
Green Shark said this while leaning against one side of the cart beneath a hide blanket.
Of course, I was her body pillow.
"How did the two of you manage when you traveled alone?"
"What is there to say? We lay on the ground and got covered in morning dew."
"Wolves and bears would come by now and then, too."
From what I heard, they had slept on bare ground in makeshift shelters that barely qualified as shacks, never mind tents.
And if they did not keep a fire going, they often had to wrestle with animals.
"What did you do, Polar?"
"Me?"
Marmotte asked back while I was listening to the two of them talk about surviving in the frontier.
Come to think of it, I had never really talked about my past.
That was because I had not lived any remarkable kind of life, so there was nothing much to explain.
"Nothing much. I just lived my life."
I had been used to working with machines since I was young, and I put that aptitude to use by getting a job at a decent factory.
The Middle Realm did not have the excessive human rights of the prosperous worlds, nor did it have the disregard for human life found in the urban worlds.
Sometimes I wondered whether I had become a machine part myself, but honestly, I quite liked it.
A simple life where I could empty my head and just do as I was told.
"Then I happened to win a trip to a resort planet..."
Maybe that had been the first decision I had ever made for myself.
I made the decision somewhat impulsively and took all my accumulated leave.
Since the journey alone would take months, I lay down in a cryosleep pod aboard the spaceship. When I woke up, the whole ship had been blown to pieces.
Before that happened, I had fled in an escape pod because I wanted to live.
"And then..."
Green Shark smashed my head open with a club.
I did not say it out loud, but perhaps embarrassed, the two of them averted their eyes.
.
.
.
"Around here..."
Several days into the journey.
Marmotte, who had spread out the map atop the cargo bed, gauged our location.
We had a little less than half the journey remaining until our destination.
Green Shark did not tire easily, but she occasionally traded places with Polar to pull the cart.
And our current location was the arid shrubland near the road that we had discussed before.
Beep, beep, beep...
At the same time, a mechanical sound came from inside the cart.
It was a kind of radio made by removing the transmitter from a communicator and modifying it for reception only.
It was picking up a steady wavelength.
"An emergency signal?"
The transmission was coming from nearby ruins.
There was supposed to be a mechanoid outpost around here.
If so, perhaps this signal had been sent by mechanoids.
"..."
But mechanoids did not use such antiquated tricks when they wanted to exterminate living creatures.
They simply dropped Centipedes and Scythers on your head.
"Polar."
So Marmotte decided to consult the expert.
"What?"
Polar had been helping Green Shark pull the cart until just moments ago, and his hair clung to his head with sweat.
His sweat-soaked shirt showed every curve of his body, and the entire towel was thick with his scent.
Mm. It was very lewd.
"An emergency signal was detected nearby."
Perhaps words like “communications” and “rescue” had become a mild trauma for Polar after the last attack, because he lightly furrowed his brow.
But there was no doubt that he was fundamentally a good person, so although reluctant, he showed interest.
"It’s an omnidirectional signal with no channel set."
The male pheromones suddenly flooding over her made Marmotte’s head spin.
Could Green Shark have refrained from refusing Polar when he insisted on pulling the cart because of this?
The impossible hypothesis that maybe she was smart, too, sprang to mind.
"Didn’t they say there was a mechanoid outpost nearby?"
"That’s what was written on the map."
But this information had come from the raiders, after all.
The question was how much we could trust people who made a living by robbing others.
"Maybe they mistook the ruins’ defense system for a mechanoid outpost."
Then again, the Maru Raiders operated in the north, so they would not know much about the central region.
Marmotte nodded at the reasonable argument.
"Then let’s go take a look."
Ancient ruins had long been known to yield many valuable things.
To be honest, Green Shark and Marmotte had a record of looting threats like these several times already.
Not that they had ever found anything like an artifact...
For some reason, though, this time felt quite different.
.
.
.
"It’s completely wrecked."
"Looks like someone fought here recently."
At first glance, the ruins looked as though they had simply collapsed with age, but Green Shark inspected their condition and found traces of battle.
Looking again, what had seemed like ordinary marks appeared to be bullet impacts.
Iron fragments and machine parts were scattered everywhere as well.
"There are footprints too. Was there only one person?"
Even Marmotte, whose eye level was lower than everyone else’s, spotted the footprints stamped into the ground.
Judging by their size and stride, they belonged to an adult woman.
Though this planet had more adult women than anyone else, of course.
"This is creepy..."
Had there been a large fire? The place was filled with the smell of burning and soot.
A ruptured fuel tank nearby seemed to be the cause.
With that wall destroyed, had she escaped that way?
"What about the signal?"
Beep beep beep, beep beep.
"We’re getting closer to it."
The mechanical sound from the receiver Marmotte held grew faster and faster.
Clank, clank.
After following the signal through several open doors, we could hear an unfamiliar mechanical noise as well.
"...!"
A machine sound coming from ancient ruins where mechanoids had reportedly been sighted.
Green Shark silently gripped her club, and Marmotte stuck close behind her.
Click, click.
What appeared before us along with the sharp scrape of metal was—
"Huh?"
A machine of a somewhat cute size for an ancient-ruin threat.
A mechanoid snapping its scissors flashed blue light in a threat display.
"...Water..."
The fading voice of the person who had apparently sent the signal came from a corner.
She had been difficult to see in the darkness, but the hood covering her entire head was striking.
The castaway, her face gaunt as if she had suffered terribly, struggled to speak.
"Are you all right?"
One of her legs seemed injured, bent at an alarming angle, so I carefully supported her and handed her my canteen.
Several tails trembled as they accepted the canteen.
The castaway gulped it down as though it were the water of life itself.
We were both castaways, yet the difference between her and me—whose skull had been smashed in immediately—was like heaven and earth.
"By any chance..."
She had wet her throat, but the words leaking from it were still terribly dry.
In a voice made even more desperate by thirst, she pleaded.
"Do you have... tobacco...?"
"Excuse me?"
"Beer... Sunification... flake... Anything is fine..."
What she demanded with that deathly blackened face was a psychoactive addictive drug.
-----
The average frontier world today.
When it comes to ancient ruins, it is better to break down the walls than open the doors.
Because fires break out quite often...
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